Then I was screaming, and everything was colour and sound, everything was alive and good. I was throwing my free arm around Hassan and we were hopping up and down, both of us laughing, both of us weeping.

"You won, Amir agha! You won!"
"We won! We won!" was all I could say. This wasn't happening. Then I saw Baba on our roof. He was standing on the edge, pumping both of his fists. Hollering and clapping. And that right there was the single greatest moment of my twelve years of life, seeing Baba on that roof, proud of me at last. But he was doing something now, motioning with his hands in an urgent way. Then I understood.

"Hassan, we---"
"I know," he said, breaking our embrace. "Inshallah, we'll celebrate later. Right now, I'll run that blue kite for you,"he said. He dropped the spool and took off running, the hem of his green chapan dragging in the snow behind him.

"Hassan!" I called. "Come back with it!"

He was already turning the street corner, his rubber boots kicking up snow. He stopped, turned. He cupped his hands around his mouth. "For you a thousand times over!" he said. Then he smiled his Hassan smile and disappeared around the corner. The next time I saw him smile unabashedly like that was twenty-six years later, in a faded Polaroid photograph.




"How long will you be gone?"
"I don't know. He wants to see me."
"Is it . . ."
"Yes, it's safe. I'll be all right, Soraya." It was a question she'd wanted to ask all along -- fifteen years of marriage had turned us into mind readers.
"I'm going for a walk."
"Should I go with you?"
"Nay, I'd rather be alone."

My suspicions had been right all those years. Rahim Khan knew all about Assef, the kite, the money, the watch with the lightning bolt hands. He had always known.

Come. There's a way to be good again, Rahim Khan had said in the phone just before hanging up. Said it in a passing, almost as an afterthought.

I lay in the dark the night Rahim Khan called and traced with my eyes the parallel silver lines on the wall made by moonlight pouring through the blinds.

At some point, maybe just before dawn, I drifted to sleep. And dreamed of Hassan running in the snow, the hem of his green chapan dragging behind him, snow crunching under his black rubber boots. He was yelling over his shoulder: For you, a thousand times over!


- The Kite Runner